Swithin shouted: ‘Yield! Yield!’
The noise of fighting died rapidly, to be replaced by the sound of iron swords falling to the stone floor. Rollo looked around and saw that his father, Sir Reginald, was kneeling down, holding his head, which was bloody.
Ned did not take his eyes off Swithin, Rollo saw. Ned said: ‘I arrest you in the name of the queen for blasphemy, desecration and murder.’
Rollo jumped to his feet. ‘We’re not the blasphemers!’
‘No?’ said Ned with surprising composure. ‘But here you are in the church, with your swords unsheathed. You have wounded the bishop-elect and murdered the gravedigger, and you’ve caused the holy relics to be dropped on the floor.’
‘What about yourselves?’
‘The sheriff and his men came here to protect the clergy and the relics, and a good thing we did.’
Rollo was baffled. How had this gone so wrong?
Ned said: ‘Osmund, tie them up, then take them to the Guild Hall and lock them in the jail.’
Osmund promptly produced a roll of stout cord.
Ned went on: ‘Then send for the surgeon, and make sure he treats Dean Luke first.’
As Rollo’s hands were tied behind his back, he stared at Ned, whose face registered a savage kind of satisfaction. Rollo’s mind thrashed about looking for explanations. Had the sheriff been tipped off about Swithin’s intentions, or had the timid Dean Luke summoned them merely out of nervousness? Had the Puritans been warned off, or had they simply decided not to come?
Had Ned Willard planned this whole disaster?
Rollo did not know.
*
Earl Swithin was executed, and I was responsible for his death. I had no idea, then, that he was the first of so many.
Rollo and Bart and Sir Reginald were punished with heavy fines, but one of the group had to die, and the earl had actually murdered a man in church. That was the justification; but what really sealed his fate was that he had tried to defy the will of Queen Elizabeth. The queen wanted England to understand very clearly that she, alone, had the right to appoint bishops, and anyone who interfered with her prerogative risked his life. Shocking though it was to kill an earl, she needed Swithin dead.
I made sure the judge understood her wishes.
As the crowd gathered in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral for the execution, Rollo stared hard at me, and I knew he suspected a trap, but I don’t think he ever worked it out.
Sir Reginald was there, too, with a long scar across his head where the hair never grew back. The wound damaged his brain as well as his hair, and he never quite regained his wits. I know Rollo always blamed me for that.
Bart and Margery watched, too.
Bart wept. Swithin was a wicked man, but his father.
Margery looked like someone released from a horrible dungeon into the sunlight and fresh air. She had lost that sickly look, and she was dressed with her former panache, albeit in sombre mourning colours: on her, a black hat with a black feather could still look playful. Her tormentor was on his way to hell, where he belonged, and she was free of him.
Swithin was brought out of the Guild Hall; and I had no doubt that the worst part of his punishment was the humiliating walk down the main street to the square in front of a jeering throng of people he had always despised as his inferiors. His head was chopped off, decapitation being the mercifully quick death reserved for the nobility; and I imagine the end came as a release.
Justice was done. Swithin was a murderer and a rapist who deserved to die. But I found that my conscience was not untroubled. I had lured him into an ambush. In a way the death of poor George Cox was my responsibility. I had meddled in things that should be left to the law or, failing that, to God.
I may yet go through anguish in hell for my sin. But if I had to live that time again I would do the same, to end Margery’s ordeal. I preferred to suffer myself than to know that her agony continued. Her wellbeing was more important to me than my own.
I have learned, during the course of a long life, that that is the meaning of love.
Part Three
1566 to 1573
14
